Want some good news? I mean, genuinely good news? Check this out:
According to the Washington Post, fatal shootings of unarmed suspects plummeted in 2021. The total number dropped from 60 to 25, with big drops recorded for every racial and ethnic group.
Maybe the George Floyd protests had some effect after all.
Well good, but it seems to me that the police have a very narrow definition of "unarmed". The LAPD killed two people in one incident yesterday: a man holed up in a department store dressing room and a 14 year old girl trying on a dress in an adjacent dressing room. No doubt she will considered unarmed, but since she wasn't a suspect will she show up in these statistics? The suspect was armed with a bicycle lock. No doubt he could do some damage with it; he had attacked a woman at the store. However, when you look at the statistic presented, does it occur to you that some of the armed suspects are carrying bicycle locks, hammers, steak knives, golf clubs, pellet rifles, etc? Yes they are possibly armed, but certainly at a disadvantage to policemen with tasers, pistols, bullet-proof vests, batons, and with numbers and time on their side. (Why is it that tasers don't seem to replace firearms? It seems like tasers are used where police in the old days would have manhandled or punched someone.)
Are tasers sort of like high-tech clubs?
Tasers use two metal points that are fired at you, and when they pierce your skin, give out a massive bolt of electricity to crash you out . Unless you have heart trouble, they do not kill you, just disable you .
Electric Avenue is still lowkey one of the better sketches in the Jackass Anthology Series. About two & a half steps behind the best: Terror Taxi.
Tasers fail about 40% of the time. Since the officer has to be very close to the armed suspect to deploy the taser (optimum range of about 10 feet), this can have very fatal consequences for the officer.
And all those things you mentioned are weapons, though with varying levels of lethality. For example, a steak knife or hammer could kill within a few seconds. Pellet rifles can kill a deer, so they can kill a human.
Everything you say is true. Time for police to used mounted M2's, with ball rounds of course.
And Darth Vader can hack you to death with the edge of a cafeteria tray.
Do you have a citation of an officer being killed deploying a taser?
Probably not.
A friend of mine was shot and killed answering the door with a screwdriver in her hand. Because she was repairing a computer and there was a noise outside. The officers were 50' away at a domestic disturbance.
Was she an unarmed suspect?
"... had some effect after all."
Do the graph for total homicides to see the real effect.
What has probably had an effect (as Kevin said before) is that police are realizing that they can be videoed by citizens. Maybe body cams have also played a part.
But even more than witnesses being able to capture cellphone video uploaded direct to an IG story or Snapchat, the police realize with the rise of the Rittenhouses & their political prisoner cousins the Mc Michaels*, nonuniformed peace officers are doing the work. Means less paperwork for the cops to fill out, too.
*[footnote redacted]
I’m genuinely confused about the girl that got blown away apparently because of a police officer who is a poor marksman with even worse judgement. I haven’t been involved in such things for many years but my impression is that, with the exception of highly specialized units, the LAPD in particular requires its members to use what are called “light” or “police” loads which have significantly less penetrating power specifically to prevent a miss from blowing away some child in the next room.
If there’s someone out there with current knowledge about LAPD, this is my question: Has this changed over the years or was this officer out of policy?
Not a police expert, but an interior wall likely consists of two layers of sheet rock. Even a "light" load will have no problem penetrating this.
100% agree. .22 rim-fire cartridges can do this. A "light load" 9mm is going to have to be powerful enough to cycle the pistol's action. It'll probably go thru 10 layers of sheet-rock. Do they even use stuff as substantial as sheet-rock to make changing rooms?
The cops had no excuse to use firearms in this situation. They should go to prison for both killings.
Apparently we are unable to use links in our replies now. I’ve tried twice. One of my links indicated the type of ammunition the LAPD uses (Speer G2). The other was a test of the ammunition indicating its penetration power and that it’s hollow point wasn’t affected by clogging when shot through dry wall. I found the articles through Google.
Thanks for the info. I googled Speer G2. In looking at what I found, it seems like the warrior cop mentality has very throughly permeated every aspect of modern policing in this country. There’s no indication anywhere that police feel any responsibility for not killing innocent civilians. Everything is a war, the police are an army of occupation on behalf of the idolized mythic past, and this little girl is just collateral damage.
As a test, a link to the intermittently updated spreadsheet I've been maintaining for COVID using Johns Hopkins' data repository:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1vPxCBqCXsRvjR3PdLn0vXdJQF3wao-Ry5bS3Fe_9Qxs/edit#gid=328022503
Good news, but, while I'm no expert on the statistics of crime and policing (nor statistics in general), my layperson's sense is that the kinds of numbers in question — mere dozens in a country of 330 million (with many thousands of fatal shootings annually) — would be highly likely to bounce around quite a bit in percentage terms.
But wait, today’s New York Times: “Despite Uproar Over Floyd’s Death, the Number of Fatal Encounters With Police Hasn’t Changed “.
Sorry, I don’t know how to paste the link...
That would be the difference between "police killings of people" and "police killings of unarmed people".
So police are better at declaring their murder victims 'armed'.
More likely, due to police going to prison for the rest of their lives after being convicted of murder. Nothing dents your sense of impunity like realizing your right to impunity has evaporated.
As with the weightiness of bricks, police shooting suspects go to prison (sometimes).
All three lines are rather noisy, but to the Mk I eyeball it looks as though Black and Hispanic are following their long-term trend lines.
Lockdowns had a effect. Sorta explains why Hispanics weren't into the whiners whining..
Eh. The raw numbers, whether 60 or 25, are statistically insignificant. And the police don't know whether the criminals (yeah, they're always criminals with long rap sheets), are armed or unarmed when they first encounter them. And meanwhile, in Chicago and Philadelphia, the number of murder victims dwarfs the police killings. Pretty direct correlation, I'd say.
Could you perhaps give a few examples of the many unarmed people killed by police with long rap sheets?
"... The raw numbers, whether 60 or 25, are statistically insignificant. .."
Actually (according to a calculator I found online) a 60-25 split (or greater) will only occur by chance about 1/5000. Which would generally be considered statistically significant. Of course the figures for 2021 may not be complete yet.
Philando Castile did not have a long rap sheet. Neither did Tamir Rice. Those are just a couple of examples that got news coverage and so spring to mind.
"Just a couple." Nah. Just about the only ones, and the officer in the Castile shooting wasn't even White. ALL of the white-on-black police shootings get 24/7 coverage. People rattle off the names of the the same ten or so shot individuals (out of a population of 360 million) and then pretend they're just the tip of the iceberg, when they're the whole iceberg. But the thousands of victims in Democrat-controlled cities? Can't name one, even though if you Google "Chicago" + "weekend" + "murders" you'll find 5 to 10 bodies every week.
Now you're speaking Conor Friedersdorf's & Kevin Drum's anticancellation language!
I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make. You seem to be arguing that the existence of murder means that police officers should have the unfettered power to kill anyone and everyone with complete impunity. Otherwise, how would the fact that murders occur relate to the killing of unarmed civilians?
Similarly, your acceptance of this young girl’s death as insignificant suggests that you do not thing police should take care not to indiscriminately fire their or stupidity panic and risk innocent lives because they’re basically living in a fantasy world with everyplace is “Fort Apache, the Bronx”. Police officers have a responsibility to protect innocent children, not casually and indiscriminately slaughter them.
Dude. Almost no one wants to see innocent lives lost.
The point he's making, however, is a life lost in police crossfire is no less tragic than one lost in gang crossfire. One, however, is literally hundreds of times more common than the other. A large part of the political left pretends police are some great threat to minority life while ignoring children who die weekly from inner city violence. A former student of mine was shot and killed a few miles from my house, not by cops, but gang members. He was 14. Why do you know Michael Brown's name, but not his?
Crime is common but how does that justify a police culture that kills criminals and innocents almost indiscriminately?
Criminals represent only themselves The police supposedly act in the name of the people and represent us, not themselves. The notion that a police officer can use deadly force because he’s frightened (in the absence of a clear threat) should be unacceptable. The idea that the only value to be considered in choosing weapons and ammunition for the police and if some poor girl gets mowed down, it’s unfortunate but “so what” should also be unacceptable.
The only way that what you’re saying makes any sense is if the police are just another criminal gang extracting tributes from the people in return for a modicum of protection from the other, somewhat more violent, gangs.
Gang members or other criminals shooting each other (or innocent bystanders) does not excuse police gunning down unarmed citizens. Like "how come we never hear about the youth pastors who *don't* molest kids, huh?"
"Democrat-controlled cities" Mitch, it's perfectly obvious what point this jerk is trying to make. God, I hate these people. Oh well, I s'pose loathing is as good a way as any to spend Christmas day.
You are right.
The "Democrat-controlled cities" trope is widespread among the MAGA crowd. Thinking it through, they are implying that if those same cities were Republican-controlled, there wouldn't be any violence, therefore Democrats should be deposed, as if violent criminals care who's in office. Frank Luntz must have dreamed up this messaging: catchy, wrong and convincing (to the rubes).
I feel so sad for that girl in the changing room. She didn't do anything wrong. She didn't provoke a fight. She got up in the morning, had breakfast, went on with her life, then suddenly, it ended. How awful. Her family and friends must be devastated.
While I can't speak directly to the use of deadly force, I do have direct experience that attitudes, tactics, and approaches towards incidents where force could be used (domestic, psychs, disturbance, etc.) have significantly changed from operational personnel. That means, to me, that the hierarchy is now valuing different behaviors and possibly discipling differently. There is some personal irritation from the ranks but I've seen specialized, non-police personnel added to these incidents. Maybe we'll see continued improvement.
It just took nationwide demonstrations and some rioting.
ಠ_ಠ
If the job of the police is to "get" the "bad guys", then a little civilian collateral damage is acceptable. This is the warrior cop mentality.
If the job of the police is to protect the public, then a cop killing a civilian bystander is as bad as any "gang banger" killing a civilian bystander - except we hired, trained and armed the cop.
“Despite Uproar Over Floyd’s Death, the Number of Fatal Encounters With Police Hasn’t Changed “."
Yes, leave it to the Times not to notice the difference and if the headline is all you read, well of course the powers that be there want you to think nothing has changed. I'm presuming police do have the right to defend themselves in situations where suspects are armed following proper procedures (which, of course, doesn't always happen). Video does make a big difference and so does accountability within the league system to try prevent the shootings of unarmed civilians. That doesn't mean are completely eliminated at was witnessed in LA recently, but it does mean or should mean that people are held responsible. Taxpayers are not "collateral damage".
I hate this statistic and the way it is used. Implying that any police killing of someone who is unarmed is unjustified which is just not true.
And also implying that police killings of armed suspects are all justified which is also not true .
It is possible that the percentage of police killings that are justified is higher among the unarmed police killings than among the armed, maybe due to police reaction to this false meme.
Exactly. How much of this chart is expanding the definition of 'armed'?